A Fun Night Out – Kid Canaveral live

What went right there? Right through the build up to last night’s Cool Cat Club show, we were well ahead of our best advance sales for last year’s Meursault show. When we matched the total attendance in advance sales, I think both Andy and myself were convinced the walk-ups were going to be limited. Wrong. From 8 o’clock people started streaming in and kept coming in past our most optimistic hopes.

After a couple of years of good intentions, it was remarkably satisfying to be able to put on a show with an audience to match an exceptional bill.

Luna Webster

To be honest, I didn’t get much of a chance to take in Luna Webster’s set properly being on the door for the bulk of it and being slightly dazed by the stream of punters in the door. But from where I was it sounded like she made a fine job of playing to a room that was busy for an opening act when she started – and just kept getting busier almost with every note she played.

Randolph’s Leap

There’s something wondrous about Randolph’s Leap in full flight and that quality was on display in abundance throughout their set last night. But, I think for me, the stand-out was not the likes of ‘Hermit’ but instead a full band vesion of ‘Weatherman’. Starting out similarly to the ‘As Fast As A Man’ version with just Adam and Heather, the band were gradually introduced to leave it as one of the most affecting tunes of the night.

Man Without Machines

My liking for Man Without Machines is well documented on here but last night was the first time that I’d seen them play since getting to know the LP properly. They played all of my favourites off the LP building up to a spectacular closing ‘In Salt’. A great band, it would be great to see them playing outwith Dundee in the next few weeks to take the album to a wider audience.

Kid Canaveral

Finally, the headliners brought a wonderful evening to a fitting conclusion. The set was on similar lines to the LP launch but interestingly the tunes that they dropped were a couple of the earlier singles and not any of the new ones.

Again I’ve written multiple times about how great Kid C are on stage and this was every bit as good as the best of previous shows. And I can’t help but think that last night was a belated reward for the band for the last time we put them on in Dundee – to less than 20 playing punters.

All my photos from the show are available to view here. Michael Lambert’s photos are here.

There’s barely time to deaw breath as the next Cool Cat Club is on Saturday (23rd). This should be a much noisier affair as it is based around Vladimir’s E.P. launch and also features Edinburgh School for the Deaf, the New Fabian Society and the Shithawks.